[sho]

People said that about Japan 40 years, they said that about Korea 20 years ago, and it's already becoming irrelevant about China today. Yes, they caught up by copying, like everyone else did (including the USA).

There are now entire product categories which come out of China and no-where else. Drones. Camera gymbals. Personal electric scooters. Heck, their entire system of government could be called "innovative" - certainly no-one else has ever tried that before.

Give it 20 years and it'll be onto the next developing country which is copying to catch up, and China will be amongst the lead innovators - if not, as I suspect, the easy winner.

[Sangermaine]

>Heck, their entire system of government could be called "innovative" - certainly no-one else has ever tried that before.

Authoritarian one-party rule with a strongman at the top is nothing new, they just have newer tools to enforce it.

[sho]

Every shelf at your local store filled with imports from that one-party state is pretty new in my book. And "strongman"? What are you basing that on? Saddam Hussein was a "strongman". Xi Jinping is unusually powerful for the president of the CCP, sure, but he still needs to be re-elected in 2022.

[dredmorbius]

Or of the United States in the early 19th century. The 1851 Crystal Palace exposition was quite a shock.

[sho]

Care to expand on that? Why was the 1851 Expo a shock?

[dredmorbius]

Because the US was considered a backwater at the time by Europe, Britain particularly.

Merrit Roe Smith, STS.050, MIT

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Fw92I_zpmRU